 As the penalty phase gets underway in the case of Johar Sarnayev, the defense will attempt to convince the jury that Johar should receive life in prison instead of the death penalty for the 2013 Boston bombings. While the first part of the trial was focused on Johar and his involvement in the bombings, a large focus in the penalty phase will be on older brother Tamberlin. They really want to paint this picture of Johar as this almost diminutive kind of lost in the wilderness kid and he's deferential to his older brother, so we've already heard a lot of testimony about how Tamberlin really ran the whole show. Jim Armstrong from WBZ has been reporting live from inside the courtroom via Twitter and says to attest to Tamberlin's large influence over Johar, the defense is focusing largely on the Sarnayev family dynamics. In Chechen culture and in the Sarnayev family in specific, sort of the older brother really runs the show when the dad is absent and in this case the dad had some mental health issues, some physical health issues, so the father was gone that really put Tamberlin in charge. So they're going to talk a lot about how the big brother was the one who really controlled Johar. The defense has flown Sarnayev family members in from Russia to speak to Johar's character and hardships that the family has gone through. It sounds like they're going to talk about what a hard life he had, what a hard life his family had. In the opening statements the defense team was talking about how the Sarnayevs sort of for generations have been this family that's just really been unlucky. Eight of which were seen on day one, though the number is subject to change. Defense attorneys say that sending Johar to a life in prison means that he would not be able to appeal and he wouldn't gain any media attention. He would also be forced to stay away from his Islamic culture. But the penalty fees isn't predicted to end until May. Reporting from the John Joseph Mowkley United States Courthouse, for the BU News Service, I'm Keiko Talley.